ABSTRACT

The hypothesis that the roots of Britain’s relative economic decline in the twentieth century are to be found in the period between 1880 and 1914 involves a number of conceptual and analytical problems. To begin with it implies a later and pronounced experience of decline; in turn, this raises questions of how and when it became a fully developed process. There is, it is true, a substantial body of literature which examines this issue in terms of Britain’s comparative international economic development over the past century, with particular focus on the period since 1945. But in this debate the proponents of decline have been vigorously challenged by those who claim that, within a particular group of countries that possess the necessary ‘social capabilities’, economic development is a process of ‘catch-up and convergence’, and that over the longer term Britain is as well placed in the economic firmament as those countries with which it is frequently unfavourably compared.1 In the present context it is not possible to engage in this broader discussion. Accordingly, this chapter will concentrate on the more limited question of whether, between 1880 and 1914, it can be argued that Britain was failing to hold its own in the world economy; whether, in that period at least, it experienced the beginnings of economic decline.